As Timeless as the Sea

by Serenity Woods

Ginger looked at Sam. “Are you okay with that?” She, too, was close to tears.

  Sam reached out and took her hand. “Of course. I just hope we find out he’s telling the truth.”

  Sandi bit her lip as Mac pulled out his phone.

  “More importantly, are you okay with it?” Fred asked her.

  Sandi’s heart was hammering. “I kind of don’t want to know,” she whispered.

  “I know,” Fred said firmly. “But we have to get this sorted or it’s going to fester and you’ll just blurt it all out one day, and then there won’t be a relationship worth saving anyway.”

  Sandi nodded. As terrible as this all was, it was an odd relief to be talking about it, and to know they didn’t think she was crazy.

  Mac had been typing on his phone, and now announced, “I’ve got the number for Auckland Law School.”

  “Won’t they be on vacation?” Fred asked.

  “There’ll be someone in the office,” Mac said as he dialed. He put the phone to his ear, met Sandi’s gaze, and smiled.

  She smiled back, but her heart was racing now. This was so awful. It was an invasion of Jace’s privacy. He’d be outraged to know she was trying to research his past when he’d specifically told her he wasn’t ready to tell her everything.

  But she couldn’t keep silent any longer. She had to know.

  “Hi,” Mac said into the phone. “Yes, I wonder if you can. I’m an ex-student and I’m trying to get hold of a guy I used to know at the uni. Would you be able to give me a forwarding address or maybe contact him and let him know I’m trying to get in touch with him?” He listened for a bit, then looked up at the others and nodded. “Sure. It’s Jace—J-A-C-E, and his surname is Hart.”

  They all waited. Sandi wasn’t sure if any of them was breathing.

  Mac’s gaze was pinned to the floor. “Right,” he said eventually. He cleared his throat. “How about Jason Hart? He would probably have been there around 2006 to 2009, or thereabouts.”

  They waited again, but Sandi already knew the woman wasn’t going to be able to find him.

  “Okay,” Mac said eventually. “Thanks anyway—I must have gotten the name wrong.” He hung up. “There’s nobody by that name on their system,” he said.

  They all looked at Sandi. She clenched her jaw, knowing there was nothing to say.

  “So he’s changed his name,” Fred said helplessly, “or maybe he went to another uni. It doesn’t mean he’s evil.”

  “He lied,” Sam said in a hard voice. “To Sandi, and to me.”

  Ginger had gone pale. “What do we do now?”

  “We need to confront him,” Mac said simply. “Now we know, he can’t deny everything because it doesn’t make any sense.”

  “I don’t know if I can do it.” Sandi rose and went over to the window, looking out across the sunny vineyard. It should have been pouring down, with thunder and lightning. The mood was all wrong. “How do I tell him I think he’s lying to me?”

  “You don’t have to do it alone,” Sam said. “I’ll ring him, get him to come over, and we’ll all talk to him.”

  Ginger frowned. “Like an intervention?”

  “This isn’t just about Sandi now,” Sam said. “He’s lying to all of us. We deserve an explanation.”

  Fred rose and went over to Sandi. She laid a hand on her shoulder and rubbed it. “What do you think?”

  She took a deep breath and turned to her friends. “It’s lovely of you to want to help. And I appreciate that if there is something he’s not telling us, it means he’s lied to all of us.” She looked at Sam, who was frowning—Jace would have hurt his feelings almost as much as he’d hurt her own. “But I think I’m going to have to speak to Jace alone.”

  “You sure?” Ginger asked. “What about if we come with you but keep quiet, so we’re just there for moral support?”

  “You couldn’t keep quiet if your life depended on it,” Sandi said with a wry smile.

  “Fair enough,” Ginger said. “But are you sure you don’t want to take Sam? Or Fred?”

  “No. I need to do this.” Sandi stood. “In fact, I think I’ll ring him and go over now, if he’s not busy. Get it done.”

  “You’ll let us know how it goes?” Fred asked, her face full of concern.

  “Of course. Wish me luck.” Sandi gave them a last wave, and headed off to her cottage.

  Once there, she gave Jace a ring. It was a long time before he answered, and she thought it was going to go to his answerphone, but eventually he said, “Hello?”

  “It’s me,” she said softly, looking out of the window across the courtyard. Had he been talking to Lizzie? Was that why he’d taken a long time to answer?

  “Hey you.” His voice took on that gentle caress that she loved so much. “What are you up to?”

  “Missing you,” she said honestly. “I was wondering... I know we weren’t going to see each other tonight, but...”

  “Come over,” he said immediately. “I miss you too. I was just wondering what I was going to do with myself.”

  “Are you sure? I mean, if you’re busy...”

  “I’m not busy,” he said, “unless you’re including lining up episodes of The Walking Dead to watch.” He paused. “You okay?”

  “I’m fine,” she said. “It’s just... I need to talk to you about something.”

  He fell silent for a moment. Then he just said, “Okay.” He didn’t ask her what. Did that mean he’d guessed?

  She hesitated, wondering what to say. She wanted to tell him she loved him, because she did, but it would be a stupid thing to say when she was about to call him out for lying. Her throat tightened. She didn’t want to do this. She wanted to trust him. But how could she carry on like this?

  “I love you, Alexandra Cartwright,” he said. “Remember that. I’ll see you soon. And drive carefully.”

  He hung up.

  Sandi lowered the phone, her heart hammering. A tear spilled over her lashes and down her cheek. He teased her often about her full name, and had once whispered it to her while covering her body with kisses.

  She loved him, and she wanted him with all her heart. Please, she begged her mother, her father—anyone who might listening. Please don’t let his secret break my heart.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  JACE KNEW HE HAD AT least thirty minutes before Sandi arrived at his house. Once he’d hung up the phone, he dialed Lizzie’s number again on the iPad. He’d been talking to her when Sandi had rung his mobile.

  She answered almost immediately. “Hello again!”

  “Sorry to call you back,” he said.

  “It’s okay. How’s Sandi?”

  He stood and walked out onto the deck with the iPad. It was late afternoon, and a couple of small fishing boats were heading back down the inlet, ready to go home with their catch. The sun had turned the water the color of Sandi’s hair, a beautiful deep gold, with a slight touch of red. “She wants to talk to me,” he said.

  “Oh. That sounds ominous.”

  “It was only a matter of time,” he said softly. “I’m amazed she’s put up with me as long as she has.”

  “You have to tell her,” Lizzie said. “You can’t keep it a secret any longer.”

  “What if it doesn’t make a difference?” he wanted to know. “She might still end it, and I can’t afford to have someone out there who knows my real identity.”

  “You think she’s going to go around telling everyone?”

  He looked down at his feet. “No. But she might let it slip at some point.”

  “She might. I suppose the question is, are you willing to take that risk to keep her?”

  Jace said nothing. He already knew he was going to tell Sandi everything. If he didn’t, he was going to lose her, and he couldn’t bear for that to happen.

  “I should have told her it all, right at the beginning.” He cursed himself for being so secretive. “Before we both got in too deep. I’ve screwed everything up. I shouldn’t be talking to you.
If someone tells them you’re in contact with me...”

  “Nobody knows,” Lizzie said smoothly.

  “If anything happened to you and Beth...”

  “Stop being such a drama queen. Nothing’s going to happen. Talk to the girl, Jace. Explain why you didn’t tell her everything immediately. If she’s worth her salt, she’ll understand and forgive you.”

  Jace thanked her and promised to let her know how it went. Then he hung up, went inside, and poured himself a whisky.

  It wasn’t about Sandi being ‘worth her salt’. She’d been through hell, and instead of making allowances for that, he’d done exactly the opposite and forced her to walk all the way through the Underworld again for him. He should have trusted her from the beginning. But he’d spent years trusting no one, keeping secrets in a world where nobody knew who he really was. Telling anyone, even someone so close to his heart, felt impossible.

  He went back out onto the deck and sipped his whisky until he heard the scrunch of her tires on the gravel drive. Then he went in and opened the front door. He leaned against the door jamb as she got out. She looked pale, but oh-so-beautiful in jeans and a blue tunic the color of her eyes. Her hair hung past her shoulders in golden waves. He loved her, and he was prepared to drop to his knees and beg her to stay, if it proved necessary.

  “Hey,” he said as she walked toward him.

  “Hey.” She stopped and slid her hands into the pockets of her jeans. “Thanks for seeing me tonight.”

  “Of course.” Normally, he would have made a joke, made her laugh, but he felt tongue-tied with worry, and just stood back to let her pass.

  She didn’t stop to kiss him, but walked through into the living room and dropped her bag onto the table.

  “Whisky?” he asked. She shook her head. That meant she wasn’t expecting to stay. Instead, he took a Coke Zero out of the fridge and passed it to her. She popped the lid and drank a bit while he sipped his drink for Dutch courage.

  They stood facing each other across the coffee table. The sun was setting, filling the room with a honey-gold light. It was hot and humid—he should put on the air con, but he didn’t want to move. Sandi filled his whole vision, and he could only wait now for the storm to pass.

  “I know Jace Hart isn’t your real name,” she said simply.

  He sipped his whisky, letting it sear down to his stomach.

  “I didn’t mean to pry,” she said. “I tried to trust you. And I didn’t go looking for clues. But someone called the name Jason and you turned around. Your wallet has the initials J.D. And then I saw a text from Lizzie, and I knew you were hiding something from me.”

  He closed his eyes as pain shot through him. Jesus. She thought he was another Brodie.

  “I told the others,” she continued, “or, rather, they wormed it out of me because I was worried. They’re all concerned. So Mac rang Auckland Law School, and they don’t have you listed as an ex-student.”

  He opened his eyes, shocked. “That was innovative.”

  “I’m sorry for that—it feels underhanded, and I wish we hadn’t done it. But it’s done now.” She frowned, put down the can, and slid her hands back into her pockets. Her shoulders were hunched defensively. “My instinct tells me to trust you. It tells me that you’re not the same as Brodie, and that you wouldn’t hurt me the way he did. But I don’t know whether to trust my instincts. I keep asking myself whether I knew on some subconscious level that Brodie wasn’t all he seemed, and I think maybe I did and just pretended everything was fine, I don’t know. My instincts say you’re a good man. And I know I shouldn’t demand to know your life history. But because of what happened, I’m screwed up inside, and I can’t carry on like this.”

  She stopped and bit her lip. Christ, the courage it must have taken her to stand there and say all this. “Sandi...” he said helplessly.

  “I should go,” she whispered, obviously overcome with emotion. “I’m sorry, I should never have agreed to carry on seeing you. It wasn’t fair to either of us.” She turned to pick up her purse.

  “Sandi.” He moved to block her way out. “Wait.”

  She tried to go around him. “I can’t. I need to go—”

  Fuck it. He had to do something or she was going to leave.

  “I’m in the witness protection program,” he blurted out. “I’m not supposed to tell anyone.”

  She froze and stared at him. “Seriously?” The pulse raced in her neck. She swayed, and for a moment he thought she might faint, but she swallowed hard, apparently determined to stay strong.

  A wave of affection washed over him, but he knew he couldn’t just throw his arms around her. He had to put things right first.

  “I’ll tell you everything, I swear.” He gestured to the armchair behind her. “Will you sit down?”

  She looked at the chair for a moment, then slowly sank into it. Thankful she hadn’t refused, he perched on the edge of the sofa and leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, the whisky glass dangling from one hand.

  “My real name is Jason Dartnell,” he said. “I was born in Dunedin.” The city was in the south of the South Island, seven hundred miles from Kerikeri.

  Her eyebrows rose. “So how did you end up here?”

  “One thing at a time,” he said. “It’s a complicated story.” He finished off his whisky and put the glass on the table. Now he’d started, he might as well tell her everything. “My father ran a series of shops. Like two-dollar shops, you know, cheap stuff, a lot of it knock-off. From what I understand, there were shady deals going on right from the beginning, but I wasn’t aware of it when I was young. It was only as I went into my teens that I started to realize the business was far from legitimate.”

  She was still now, although her pulse continued to race in her neck. “Do you have any siblings?”

  “Two brothers. Craig and Stephen, both older than me. As soon as they were old enough, they started working for Dad in the shops.”

  “What about your mum?”

  Even now, years after the event, anger still flared inside him at the thought of what had transpired. “She knew what was going on, but she turned a blind eye to it all. She didn’t care what Dad did, as long as there was food on the table and she had a new outfit for the weekend.” He didn’t bother to stop the bitterness that had crept into his voice.

  Sandi observed him for a moment, and he knew everything he was thinking must be showing on his face.

  “Did you join the family business?” she asked eventually.

  He shook his head. “I was never interested in working in the shops. Right from when I was young, I’d wanted to be a lawyer. They used to laugh at me and take the piss because while they were out doing dodgy deals and getting drunk, I was at home doing my homework.”

  A smile flickered on her lips before fading away. “So what happened?”

  He leaned back on the sofa and blew out a breath. “From what I understand, around the time I was in late high school, they started doing business with another family, the Martins. We had a couple of warehouses by then, and Craig and Dad used them occasionally to store stuff for the Martins.”

  “What kind of stuff?” Sandi asked.

  “Drugs,” Jace said. “Some marijuana, and some pills, but mainly cocaine.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Yeah.” His jaw was knotted so tight it was making his teeth hurt. “Craig was using by then, too. I think it was him who convinced Dad to go in with the Martins. I don’t know. I kept out of it as much as I could.”

  “But you knew what was going on?”

  He hesitated and looked out of the window. “Not directly. I heard rumors. But I didn’t want to get involved. I’m ashamed of that. I wish I had said something, not that it would have done any good as they wouldn’t have listened to me. I went to uni, and I was hardly ever home.”

  “But you didn’t... use drugs yourself?”

  “Fuck no, come on, Sandi, you know me better than that. I smoked some weed at a party once
or twice. That was it. I never took hard drugs. My body is a temple.”

  She didn’t smile—he hadn’t won her over yet. “What happened then?”

  “I graduated and got a position in a law firm in the city. I didn’t go home much. I saw Lizzie occasionally, and she kept me up to speed with what was going on with the family.”

  “Lizzie?”

  “Stephen’s wife,” he said softly, and smiled. “We went to uni together, and she met him through me.”

  Sandi stared at him for a long while. He saw some of her tension dissolve, and watched her spine relax as she exhaled a long sigh of relief. She really had thought Lizzie was someone special to him romantically. The poor girl—he wished she’d just spoken to him when she’d seen the text.

  She sat back in the armchair, kicking off her sandals and curling her legs beneath her. “So what happened next?”

  “From what I can gather, tensions were building between the two families,” he continued. “The Martins were pushing us to store more of their stuff. Unbeknown to Stephen, Dad and Craig had progressed to selling the drugs too. Stephen was always a bit warier, so they kept him out of some of the dodgier deals. But he found out, and he told Lizzie he was worried about them encroaching on the Martins’ territory. So she told me, because she was starting to get frightened.”

  He stood and walked into the kitchen and poured himself another whisky. Taking a chance, he held the bottle up to Sandi. To his surprise, she nodded.

  “I can always get a taxi,” she said. A ghost of a smile hovered on her lips.

  He gave her a wry smile back and poured her a shot over ice, then brought them back.

  “When Lizzie contacted me,” he continued, sitting back down, “I confronted my family and demanded to know what was going on. Stephen and Craig were there, and we all had an almighty row. Stephen said Dad and Craig were stealing from the Martins. They denied it, but I knew he was right—I just knew it. I told them they were crazy—no way would the Martins let them get away with that. But they told me I’d lost the right to comment when I refused to get involved.”

  He took a large mouthful of the whisky. “I tried to bring Mum into the conversation to talk some sense into Dad and Craig, but she said it was none of her business. I was so angry that I ended up walking out. But I kept thinking about it, and a couple of weeks later, when Lizzie told me the Martins had requested a meeting with Dad and the others, I was so worried that I decided I’d follow them there. I don’t know what I thought I was going to do—maybe try to intercede, be the big lawyer, you know...”